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The idea of two football clubs merging together is enough to make any loyal football fan's skin crawl.. but is there actually a world in which it makes sense? With recent rumours about a Sheffield United-Wednesday merger not exactly rejected by those at the clubs, Alex is here to discuss why such an idea isn't so farfetched, and why football's current financial climate could see more mergers in the near future.
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0:00
Picture this, it's the opening day of the 2055-56 campaign, and you sit down, excited
0:05
for European Super League sponsored by Amazon action. Sponsored by Amazon. But this year, there's a twist
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They've got what they're calling jumbo teams. To kick us off in this new era, Libertad vs Manchester Football Group, Bayern Munich
0:19
Berg vs Sundercastle follows, after that it's Arsenal Hotspurs vs Juventino, and we finish
0:25
with the Clasico, Realético Madrid vs FC Barcelona. The best local teams in world football have merged
0:33
They want to be bigger, they want to win more trophies, they want to make more money. The fans protested, of course, but at this point, who cares
0:39
I don't know about you, but I think I'd find another sport. Games gone has never been more apt
0:45
Obviously, a total hellscape. Never going to happen, right? Funny you should say that
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Because something not a million miles away was proposed recently as high in the English game as the championship
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And stick with me, because this is absolutely mad. On October 24th, Championship side Sheffield Wednesday went into administration
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The club have had all sorts of financial and legal issues under owner Depon Chancery
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including a dodgy stadium sale, unpaid HMRC bills and cash flow problems
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and it's all led to points deductions and transfer bans. They are rock bottom of the championship, Chancery has been banned from owning or directing an EFL club for three years
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and the club is set to be sold, an asking price reportedly set at over £30 million
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But then, at the end of November 2025, multiple major outlets, including Sky Sports and ESPN
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broke the news that an email asking for a firmer asking price and more financial details on Wednesday's assets
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had been sent from COH Sports, the American owners of local rivals Sheffield United
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with talk of a potential merger. The rumours, understandably, sparked outrage amongst both sets of fans
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that peaked in the aftermath of United's 3-0 win over Wednesday in the Steel City Derby
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And three days later, Steve Rosen and Helmi El-Tuki, the co-chairman of United
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released a statement saying that they wished to further modernise the club and be at the cutting edge, among other such business speak
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but crucially, did not deny the rumours. And when Sheffield United's manager Chris Wilder was quizzed on potential merger talk
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he said everything will be dealt with by Steve Bettis, Sheffield United's chief executive and
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the owners, but again, failed to deny that the conversation had taken place. What would they
2:32
call themselves? Sheffield divided? Sorry. I couldn't believe it when I first heard it
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and I had to know more. So first, I needed some expertise. Hi, I'm Jordan Gardner. I'm an American sports executive. I'm a former shareholder of Swansea
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City Football Club when they were in the Premier League. Now I do consulting work with mostly
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investment groups out of North America that look to buy football clubs in Europe
2:57
Jordan is a whiz at this stuff. So my first question was this. The report said that neither
3:01
the EFL or the football regulator would approve this, and COH, the owners, must have known that
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So why would they risk becoming the least popular people in Sheffield considering it basically a non I think it most likely a misguided idea from an American ownership group
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particularly the guys at Sheffield United, thinking, hey, you could create a more global, larger club that could compete in the Premier League
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and potentially Europe if you just had one club there. They looked at it and said, look, we can take over the market share of our competitor
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Why would we not do that? That's incredibly misguided for a bunch of different reasons
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A, to your point, it's never going to logistically happen. A football regulator, the politicians, the family
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no one would ever let it happen. And it's just not something that's part of the culture in European football
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So yes, it's a misguided idea. But as Jordan said, you can make business sense of it
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If you could somehow get this past the EFL, the regulator, and the fans baying for your blood
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you spend £30 million to double the size and quality of your squad
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get loads of assets to sell off, get access to another youth academy, and remove competition for talented kids in the local area at youth level while you're at it
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and you acquire all the other assets that come with the club. The stadium, the training ground, the offices, and so on
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You also make sure your stadium is the only one getting the gate receipts in the local area
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COH acquired Sheffield United in December 2024, and since then have permanently signed the likes of Unwuchukwu
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Kaceres, Cannon, Polendakov, Bukaki, Tanganga and Zatterström for the first team at a combined fee of around £22 million before wages
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you could nearly buy Sheffield Wednesday for that. But United and Wednesday have been bitter rivals for over 130 years
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making the Steel City derby one of the oldest in the country. As Mourinho would say
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football eric ditch. So even if you can make business sense of it, it's never happening
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But is that it? Just an open and shut case? Well, that will be quite a short video
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So no. And I think this bizarre moment in time actually raises more questions than it answers
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Firstly, do fans really understand what's going on financially in football and what's at stake here
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I don't need to explain why Sheffield United and Wednesday fans, and indeed football fans up and down the country, shouldn't like the idea of this
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The sporting integrity, the heritage, the passion, the family ties, the history eroded
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But the championship and wider football's financial model is broken and the Premier League is the golden ticket
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Deloitte's most recent ysis has the Premier League's revenue at almost double that of the next most successful European competition, the Bundesliga
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And those figures are consistent across matchday, broadcast, sponsorship and commercial revenues
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Crucially for the ambition of teams like Sheffield United, the mid-table Premier League teams are capitalising on this growth in a way that wasn't happening before as well
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Quote, developing commercially-led strategies and business models, enabling them to further grow and diversify this revenue stream for reinvestment into their football infrastructure
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The combined impact of ever-rising broadcast revenue and increasingly lucrative commercial deals
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has solidified the financial standing of the Premier League's middle pack, which is good news for clubs that have ambitions but know that they won't be Liverpool anytime soon
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But despite championship revenues approaching £1 billion across 23-24, every single club in the league generated operating losses for the second consecutive season
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actually worsening by 25 from the losses the year before And League One clubs lost more than the previous year as well Clubs are basically existing on a financial precipice in the hope that they can make it into the Premier League one day And the Premier League broadcasting revenues are only going to keep
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rising too. Amazon Prime have already got their foot in the door. And how long before Netflix
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potentially bolstered by the purchase of Warner Brothers, Apple TV, or even social media companies
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like YouTube or X decide they want a piece of the pie as well. The interest and potential financial
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gain from the Premier League is higher than ever. But that also means financial inequality
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grows every year. Fair Game UK reports that for every £1,000 from the Premier League broadcast
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deal, £882.42 goes to Premier League clubs, £73.48 to Championship clubs in receipt of
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parachute payments, then £32.85 for clubs not in receipt of parachute payments. This then falls to
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£6.22 for League One clubs, £4.15 for League Two clubs. National League clubs get £58
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and it drops to just 15p for National League North and South clubs
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So, unless the football regulator can get that under control with higher solidarity payments
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with David Cogan, the head honcho, saying recently in an interview to the Times, he absolutely refutes the idea he's going to come in
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and demand more money from the Premier League, while also seeming to suggest that maybe there might be some tough calls
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on certain clubs, asking does any club have a God-given right to exist
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in that same interview? Is it any wonder certain club owners are asking some big questions
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It's easy to demonize COH shit, and I'm not here to defend them at all, but I get it
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And to me, this all begs another question. Are we going to see more new ways of thinking like this across the English football pyramid to try and stay afloat
7:58
On the mergers point specifically, Jordan explained to me that that's not going to happen anytime soon at the top level
8:03
simply because it's so hard to achieve. But for the lower leagues, for clubs in financial trouble, there might be something here
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I do think there is an argument in European football that do we have two? I mean, this is an American thing, but do we have too many football clubs
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Not at the top level, but if you go down to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh tier, there's clubs and they are cannibalizing each other in terms of supporters, commercial dollars
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So the question is, you know, at what point do smaller clubs, very small clubs
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potentially come together to create more viable football clubs that can make sure they can pay their bills and survive
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But I think when it comes to a necessity of a berry, like then you potentially could seek conversations
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but I still find it highly unlikely. Clubs may have to think increasingly radically to survive
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Bury FC, two-time winners of the FA Cup, by the way, merged with Bury AFC in 2023 and they survived
8:51
And the influence of American ownership in the league, now in effect at least partially in 12 of the Premier League's 20 clubs
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is getting more and more powerful. And that brings with it a whole different mode of thinking to English football
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English clubs are good investments. The league system means that a team like Everton
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when they were purchased by the Friedkin Group, were a relative bargain because they were having a down year
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and that sort of volatility doesn't exist in US sports as much
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And the Premier League also has the highest number of qualification spots for UEFA competition across any league in Europe
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a highly lucrative prospect. I asked Jordan if he thought clubs could get even more desperate
9:25
if things don't change. Yes, I do. You know we obviously haven spoken yet about the financial model in some of these leagues particularly outside of the Premier League And it incredibly difficult frankly from someone with a savvy business background doesn make a whole lot of sense You have 24 clubs I think in the championship who all think
9:42
that year they're going to make the Premier League. And when they don't, you know, significant losses. Lots of groups I talked to have new ideas of how to change the model and how to make it work
9:50
You know, there's talk, obviously, of the American groups and particularly in the Premier League of coming together to make kind of governance changes, which I think is probably not really
9:58
something that you have to worry about too much because every American group has different ideas of what they want to do. I mean, obviously I consistently hear, you know, we're going to do
10:04
a Wrexham, right? We're going to have a media play of some kind, which is obviously we can have a
10:08
separate conversation about how Wrexham is entirely not replicable. There's like a apparel component
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I hear a lot of like, Hey, you know, if we have a third kid, if we have a line of apparel, maybe
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that's the revenue stream that other clubs don't have. Obviously everyone talks about selling
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players and that's a part of the model, which helps minimize some losses. You do have some
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folks look at what's happening at Birmingham where it's part of a larger real estate play
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So that's one that I understand it makes sense, although getting infrastructure built in Europe
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for instance, can be quite challenging, especially being a foreign investor. So there's
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different areas, but none of them to me solve the day-to-day problem of how do we fill the gap
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between what we're bringing in and what we're spending for the most part, and particularly outside of the Premier League. So the final question is this, where does it leave the fans
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What's the price of this ambition, this constant desire for more? More investment, more players, more everything
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We're all guilty of it, myself included. We all want more from our clubs
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And Sheffield United's owners and fans want the same thing, certainly on the surface
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They're just going about it in a different way, right? So my question is, what is worth it to make it to the promised land
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A tell-all documentary? Bring it on. A new strand of apparel? Probably, yes, depends on the colours
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But a disrupted city centre buying up local land? A constant revolving door of players or a cold marketplace of footballers you never get a chance to connect with
11:25
A merger with your rivals? Where's the line? As clubs seek multi-club models and more global commercial deals, the game grows and globalisation marches on
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That tie of identity that holds the fabric together and makes this such a mad idea to begin with begins to fray
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Every fan wants their club to succeed. But what's the price? And what next
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Total rebrands? Red Bull leads? What about relocations if the Chelsea Stadium redevelopment plan stalls
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This might sound mad, but is it? Considering what's already been on the table in 2025
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and when we know what's at stake for these owners? And where does that leave supporters up and down the country
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The question COH asked is a symptom, in my opinion, not the problem itself
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And if we continue to see it as a problem of solely uninformed owners who don't understand our game
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I think we continue to miss the wider reality. And this tension reveals the true question at the heart of this
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A football club is a set of assets. It's buildings, it's wages, it's a training ground, of course
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But it's people. It's the people who give it meaning. Who score the goals, who make the tea, who buy the players, who pay the gate receipts
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And those people should be ambitious. But their identity must be respected
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And no matter where the game goes from here, our ambition can never blind us to what truly binds us together
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And the reasons we all love football. If you like this content, drop a like and subscribe for more
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